Cabra, Cabbage and Good Eats

I knew  i would be tired today, when i woke up at quarter to seven, and I meant to write about this when i woke up, but i was so pressed for time and needed to prepare my long-awaited oatmeal. And even now i do not have time to write. Tyler, my intimate, is presently waiting for me to come over after a delicious meal. I am rushing now to cram everything that i would like to in the few minutes i have to waste. We made a delicious alfredo and shrimp pasta dish, followed by soft cheeses, bread and jam. I found myself explaining to Carly, as we took turns passing a quartered cabbage taking bites from the center, that i exert every bit of self control i have to enjoy the moments that are truly mine. These extended into conversations on Tea, and coffee and foreign food, but, today, it all paid off in a meal that consumed over a stick and a half of butter to prepare
 The lack of sleep was not entirely my fault, for i elected for bed at quarter to eleven. I meant to go to bed at this time but instead set-up a bed in the lawn and elected to sleep out there. At 1:00am a pair of police officers came and woke me up. I picked up my head groggily (HAVING BEEN SLEEPING!!!) and was asked if i was alright.
"of course, haven't you ever camped out in the front yard", perhaps i was smiling too much when i said this for they replied with another question:
"have you been drinking?"
"NO! i did just wake up."
Eventually they bullied me into going inside, where i settled on the couch comfortably only to wake later than i expected the next morning
Today was trying. I kept waiting for that burst of energy or spontaneity, but it never came. I almost lost hope or at the very least became embarrassed of my own seeming morosity. All the same, I did not lose hope, and while i am leaving a friend to "die of a food coma" while he waits for me to finish my post, I can't help thinking it is worth it, for it all led to at least these few seconds of happiness. Right?

Gargantuan Gooseberries

in all honesty, I am tired. So tired, in fact, that i hope i can convince myself to keep this post rather short. Luckily for me, my exhaustion did not show its face until 9a.m. this morning while Amara, my graduate student, and I were preparing inoculum plates.

The Inoculum, we took stock of 'em,
Amara and I, using special slides
counted 1, 2, 3, 4,
zoospores 1x10 to the 5
snappy i got in lab
"can't deal with tedium, man i'm mad"
So to the field, we sprayed plants
5ml each, tap, tap tap
that the end of my innocuous inoculum rap

In all seriousness though, i was really tired. I feared at any moment i would collapse, and if i wasn't collapsing, i was quite unengaged and unengaging, dragging my feet, trying to smile but i know it was only a grimace. Even at lunch i could only stretch to prevent my taking a nap, which would certainly disturb my already disturbed sleeping pattern. somehow, in my stupor, I was thrown into a bit of distress when Amara said i would be going to Hang plants with Carly.
My fear was not only at the prospect of reentering the staggering heat, but that i had always enjoyed my time with Carly, and i really feared i would lose her respect in my languid presence. I told her so, hoping i would alleviate some blame from myself. Suddenly, i lost my sense of tiredness as we began speaking bilingually, filling the lulls in the conversation with silly little spanish mini-conversations. My deep exhaustion only showed in a slight lack of cleverness.
Finally we finished and i think we both were pleasantly surprised at our own self-made pleasantries. We excitedly picked giant gooseberries that tasted like plums. We don;t have them in maine because they are black-listed for being the alternative host of a pathogen called white-pine blister rust, and i have only ever seen them on Burnt Island, off the coast of Rockland.
Today should be qualified as a bad day. I was languid and unexacting and clumsy, But i was carried all day long for the excitement of many things. Coming home, reading in the mornings, but above all the prospect of oatmeal in the morning!!!!
it has been such a long time since i have had oatmeal and i think i have seriously underestimated its potential.

Yoga, Yoga, Yoga

I seriously think that god is punishing me sometimes. Why on Earth would he cause me to be possessed with such an insatiable appetite, truly insatiable, and allow me for hours to await dinner, have a a full and healthy and balanced lunch, yet, when it is time for bed, be so consumed by the need to consume that i find myself without sleep and having to skip breakfast the next day so as not to explode from over indulgence. I mean sometimes the next day may still be salvaged, like today, where, luckily, i had the opportunity to nap for two one hour periods at work.
Today was another field day, and we finally began talking about vegetable diseases. I could not tell you exactly where we were or how to get there. I slept there and I slept back, but it took an hour and was in a town called Freeville. We were led by a man named Tom Zitter who was introduced as "one of the best known and most famous plant pathologists alive." You always expect, when someone gets an introduction like that, they will have something extraordinary. Dr. Zitter's extraordinary attribute was his mustache (bigote en español, mustache en français,
ترجمات رئيسية in arabicIt was oddly angular and pointed on the top and complimented his droopy, bull-dog eyes. I was tired enough to be marginally rude in my inattentiveness, and found myself waltzing around a lettuce field while the rest of the group pushed forward with their disease survey. I had three companions: two asain women, i believe both were from china, who kept telling me how delicious certain weeds (like pigweed and lambsquarters) were and how important they were in chinese medicine. the other partner was Carly Summers, whom i always seem to take the pleasure in.

YOGA
So when i said earlier that i think god is punishing me for some strange reason, i failed to mention that he gave me the ability to stretch, and that i often find myself lost for the world until i realize i have forgotten to stretch that day.
I should not forget these little tools that get me through the day because they really do get me through the day.

Thrills!!!

I am having trouble holding my head up today from dancing too enthusiastically last night at an alternative bar... THE HAunT. I honestly came so close to not going in the hope that i might take an early night to rise early and do some writing, and catch up with everyone back home. Once must do what is expected of them and so i went.

The Anxiety for the trip started early in the evening when Jessica Wertschel came down to the house dressed in a puffy dress with make-up galore, and high heels that gave her the appearance of a beverly hills superstar. Secretly, as i pulled my pants about my chest and took on the persona of an unstable epileptic, i felt that fancy sunglasses and colorful dresses would not fit in with the crowd at the haunt, whose sign had a scull and skeleton surrounded by a black back drop. 

My suspicions proved true, for when we got there, there were twenty-people dancing strangely, as if bathing under a waterfall. For me, as soon as i saw the place, i knew i would swallow every bit of self-respect and, knowing that i would never see these people again, began dancing like a maniac. Honestly, i lost myself so completely that i, myself, wondered what drugs i was on (none by the way). Eventually, after being elbowed by a large and awkward man in a black leather vest, i was asked by the bouncer "to tone it down, you are dancing dangerously". I was in pink pants! I was surrounded by a bunch of people dressed in black with teased hair and often managing to look like gothic pirates.

It was really for the best, because today, and even last night i could hardly lift my neck for pain.

While the girls who expected a club were disappointed, i was only exuberant at the opportunity to perform. I know it irritated the others, save Mary (the girl with exercise-induced asthma) who danced as emphatically as I did. Despite how embarassing it must have been, and how much i feel like my mother, it was like being in a David Sedaris Story. 

Dreams:

So as a result of my trip, where i expected that many of the people had a drug addiction, I had one of the most bizarre dreams. It went so, I was told to steal some baking soda in order to make crack-cocaine. I didn't even know that's how you made crack!! but i was at a music festival called grassroots that will take place in a couple of weeks and the announcer mentioned that Jon Haddow would be doing a dance number and suddenly Betty, Noah, Gert, Peter, and Janet jump onstage in skin-tone spandex whipping their hips side to side singing some odd distortion of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". 

Amphibious RV?

I am back, oh yeah. back, back, back and happy too. I think i am beginning to be redundant with my love of the dock on the lake where i have had numerous adventures with local fisherman. I am starting to see the same people over and over again on my trips down there and also a shift in the populations. Not a new story that young arrogant rich people move in to an area driving out the locals. Now, rather than see my old fishing buddies or the mentally impaired soccer trainer (who, i have heard, is not actually a trainer but brings a beach ball sized soccer ball to every game and plays at mid field with the children at half-time) but a group of noisy twenty-somethings who drink beer and where colorful plastic glasses and lay as if they were expecting a photographer to take their picture for Vogue or a new Cosmo article called "hotties caught off guard: in search of hunks basking in the sun". So, after a trying day, i make my way down and see two of these "studs" laying in front of each other, which time i observed that they must even try to look attractive for each other. On laid sideways propped on his elbow drinking champagne while the other leaned back on one arm, stoking his right nipple region thoughtlessly.
In contrast of my distasteful friends, another group of three inhabited the docks. Two i had seen before and had described in a previous blog as two "not unattractive people", and my memory must have deceived me, for they were much more than marginally attractive. They oozed cool and were even more respectable when i saw that they were accompanied by a very pretty but evidently retarded girl who gleefully taunted the other two to jump in the water properly rather than slink in like an otter.
I spent so much time watching their happy threesome (probably out of a concerted effort to avoid looking at the "bros") that i feared i would be considered slightly creepy. So instead i took pictures of various objects around me, chewed up sticks that the various labradors that visit the dock leave behind, a pen sitting next to me, and most excitingly a party barge that so closely resembled a mobile home/RV, that i wondered if the engineers did not use it as a template.
Thankfully, i avoided appearing creepy.
As the couple left, they said good-bye cheerfully and i, so excited at being thought benign replied a little to affectedly.
my voice nearly broke as i said good-bye.
oh and happy fourth, or third.

I also saw a beautiful little girl as i walked up from the water, with whom i playfully picked half-ripe blackberries. I was convinced that the girl was fibbing when she said they were tasty, but after eating one she handed me, i could not help believing her.

Dear Diary

When i woke up today, i thought the first sentence in my blog would be "I never smile genuinely any more!" They are always so senseless or self-conscious and i find myself perplexed that time is past when i finally straighten my face.
There is plenty to smile about. We have embarked on a true undertaking. something that only the most engaged and creative people ever have accomplished. This, my sole reader, is a horror film. I know, what is your film going to be, you ask. Of course, it hasn't been written, but this is one of my tasks for the weekend.
The whole idea came after we broke into the neighbors basement (to discourage any worry, the neighbors were breaking into their own basement with me), and found a dirt floor. Creepily, a back room with a heavy door of molding wood with a top and bottom flap, led to a room with no lights that screamed "dead things". despite my age and experience (nothing has yet jumped out of a dark room and tried to eat me) my imagination got the better of me and a slightly exciting anxiety about going into the room forced me to make a "deal" out of it. I grapped a phone from the Texan girl Jessica, who yelled, "oh my god Y'all, i am not going in there", and filmed Dan, the running man, walking slowly towards the dark room that smelled like an old musty fort. In my imagination, he would stare straight ahead without blinking, as if possessed by the spirit of the dark place. disappointingly, my attempt at telepathically transferring my image to dan's mind was proved futile when he spoke in his slightly effeminate and affected voice about something much more benign like "Bhuki, what the hell are you doing".
I was holding a camera practically under his nose, muttering incantations in the hope of realizing my imagined scene.

Oh well, things don't ever turn out the way you hoped. Nevertheless, they can always end up being pleasant, and if you do ever want anything to turn out the way you had planned, you must make it up yourself and be prepared to contend with the real world, which is never as obliging as you had imagined

see i am excited